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The study of mathematics is apt to commence in disappointment.

Alfred North Whitehead

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Alfred North Whitehead
Age: 86 †
Born: 1861
Born: February 15
Died: 1947
Died: December 30
Mathematician
Philosopher
Physicist
Theologian
Writer
Ramsgate
Kent
Math
Ghost
Mathematics
Study
Commence
Molecules
Disappointment
Mathematical

More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead

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In modern times the belief that the ultimate explanation of all things was to be found in Newtonian mechanics was an adumbration of the truth that all science, as it grows towards perfection, becomes mathematical in its ideas.
Alfred North Whitehead
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The foundations of the world are to be found, not in the cognitive experience of conscious thought, but in the aesthetic experience of everyday life.
Alfred North Whitehead
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People make the mistake of talking about 'natural laws.' There are no natural laws. There are only temporary habits of nature.
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Life is the enjoyment of emotion, derived from the past and aimed at the future.
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But in the prevalent discussion of classes, there are illegitimate transitions to the notions of a 'nexus' and of a 'proposition'. The appeal to a class to perform the services of a proper entity is exactly analogous to an appeal to an imaginary terrier to kill a real rat. Process and Reality
Alfred North Whitehead
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Religion increasingly is tending to degenerate into a decent formula wherewith to embellish a comfortable life.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Vigorous societies harbour a certain extravagance of objectives.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Nature, even in the act of satisfying anticipation, often provides a surprise.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Now in creative thought common sense is a bad master. Its sole criterion for judgement is that the new ideas shall look like the old ones. In other words it can only work by suppressing originality.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Knowledge does not keep any better than fish.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Other nations of different habits are not enemies: they are godsends. Men require of their neighbours something sufficiently akin to be understood, something sufficiently different to provoke attention, and something great enough to command admiration. We must not expect, however, all the virtues.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Nobody has a right to speak more clearly than he thinks.
Alfred North Whitehead
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To see what is general in what is particular, and what is permanent in what is transitory, is the aim of scientific thought.
Alfred North Whitehead
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The task of a university is the creation of the future, so far as rational thought and civilized modes of appreciation can affect the issue.
Alfred North Whitehead
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The foundation of reverence is this perception, that the present holds within itself the complete sum of existence, backwards and forwards, that whole amplitude of time, which is eternity.
Alfred North Whitehead
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The true method of discovery is like the flight of an aeroplane. It starts from the ground of particular observation it makes a flight in the thin air of imaginative generalization and it again lands for renewed observation rendered acute by rational interpretation.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Knowledge keeps no better than fish.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Some of the finest moral intuitions come to quite humble people. The visiting of lofty ideas doesn't depend on formal schooling.
Alfred North Whitehead
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The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanation of complex facts. We are apt to fall into the error of thinking that the facts are simple because simplicity is the goal of our quest. The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be ``Seek simplicity and distrust it.''
Alfred North Whitehead